Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now

(Reuters) – Ukrainian and Russian troops fought street-by-street to win control of the industrial city of Sievierodonetsk on Monday in the pivotal battle of the Kremlin’s eastern Ukraine offensive.

FIGHTING

* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy appealed for more weapons to arrive faster, saying things could become very difficult for Ukraine if Russian forces broke through front lines in Donbas, the eastern region where Sievierodonetsk is the main city still in Ukrainian hands.

* Zelenskiy said Russian forces had the numerical advantage in the city but that Ukraine’s forces had “every chance” of fighting back.

* Ukraine’s defence ministry accused Russia of firing on civilian infrastructure around Sievierodonetsk, further north in the Kharkiv region and to the west around Sloviansk, where it said Russia was pushing forward. Moscow denies targeting civilians.

* The governor of Russia’s Kursk region said the village of Tyotkino near Ukraine’s northeastern border had come under fire from Ukraine.

* Reuters could not independently verify battlefield reports.

DIPLOMACY AND WEAPONS

* Russia should not close the U.S. embassy in Moscow because the world’s two biggest nuclear powers must continue to talk, the U.S. ambassador was quoted as saying on Monday. The Kremlin said it was interested in nuclear arms talks with Washington though they were unlikely to take place at this time.

* Britain said it would supply Ukraine with multiple-launch rocket systems that can strike targets up to 80 km (50 miles) away.

* Putin said earlier that Russia would strike new targets if the West supplied longer-range missiles to Ukraine. His foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said it would also respond by pushing back Ukrainian forces further from Russia’s border.

ECONOMY

* Zelenskiy said up to 75 million tonnes of grain could be stuck in Ukraine by this autumn, and that Kyiv wanted anti-ship weapons that could secure safe passage for its exports.

* Russian aluminium producer Rusal has filed a lawsuit against global miner Rio Tinto, seeking to win back access to its 20% share of alumina produced at a jointly owned refiner in Queensland.

* Russia’s national wealth fund (NWF) jumped in value to $197.7 billion as of June 1 from $155.2 billion a month earlier as proceeds from 2021 oil revenues were transferred in, the finance ministry said.

QUOTE

* “Sorry, that was the last bottle of Czech beer we had” – a waiter at a central Moscow restaurant, a sign that once ample Russian reserves of foreign alcohol are dwindling.

“I’m not for a witch hunt” – Dominique Meyer, artistic director of Milan’s La Scala, which will open its 2022-23 season with Russian-composed opera “Boris Godunov” performed by Russian artists.

($1 = 0.9326 euros)

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Olzyas Auyezov, Conor Humphries and Reuters bureaux, compiled by Himani Sarkar, Philippa Fletcher and John Stonestreet)